


Complicated

by archiveScrapper



Category: The Underland Chronicles - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-08 19:13:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5509829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archiveScrapper/pseuds/archiveScrapper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt fill for thecityofregalia in the Christmas Underland Chronicles fic exchange. "4 times we almost kissed and 1 time we finally did' any ship or if your ship is animals and incapable of human kissing, '4 times I almost confessed and 1 time I actually did" This is set during one of Gregor's college summer vacations when he's in his early twenties.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Complicated

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays thecityofregalia! I'm sorry if it's not as good as you'd like or what you wanted. I had a bit of trouble with this one, but it did end up being pretty long compared to most of the other stories I've ever done. It's also really different from anything I've tried before, so I'm not sure if I did it justice. I plan on doing the first prompt at some point to, but I really like the idea and wanted to spend more time on it than I had to work on this.

Gregor easily lowered the stone back into place over his head. He was surprised by how smoothly his limbs performed the job compared to the last time he’d done so with the huge stone now blocking all of the light above him. He attributed the difference to his long days of work in the fields and went on. 

A small click of his tongue brought a hazy mental image of the tunnels around him to his mind. His echolocation skills had dulled from their lack of use, but there were still there enough to be useful. 

Gregor reached out and grasped the hand of the person he'd allowed down into the tunnel before him and began to work his way through twisting tunnels from unclear memory alone, and found himself just where he wanted to be. He sat with his legs dangling over the edge of the hole above the Waterway, eyes closed, and waited. His plus one also hung her legs over the edge, although it was clear she was highly nervous about sitting so casually above such a large and horrible drop. 

Several minutes and clicks later, interspersed with quiet conversation, the outline of a bat appeared, and he opened his eyes. Dim torch light shone off golden fur and silvery hair and Gregor smiled. When he judged the bat close enough, he closed his eyes and pushed himself into the abyss, swallowing any fear he felt just to prove to himself that he would be okay here, even if Ares couldn’t catch him, because others would. 

He landed on the bat seconds later and felt warm arms reach out and pull him into a strong hug. 

“Gregor.” She whispered, holding him tightly, her chin resting lightly on his shoulder, and then she pulled away to look at him. Though he couldn't tell, part of her desperately wanted to kiss him, and she started to lean in to do just that. 

“Luxa," he responded, and leaned towards her as well, waiting expectantly for her lips on his while simultaneously wanting to back away and explain her mistake. 

Then a loud scream pierced the air as Gregor's plus one sent herself tumbling out of the ceiling towards the turbulent waters below. Luxa pushed Gregor away from herself in an instant and turned back to face the right way on her bond, Aurora, already prepared for the maneuver they completed to catch Aurora's third passenger with ease.

The girl landed smoothly behind Gregor, her scream quickly cut off by the jolt of landing on warm bat fur. She leaned forwards into Gregor, catching her breath. 

Gregor grabbed her hand in his own again as Luxa turned her head over her shoulder to look at them. 

"Luxa, this is Elise, my girlfriend. Elise, this is Luxa." Gregor forced the words out, rather fearful of how Luxa would take the news of his relationship status. She clearly still liked him, and he had just realize he felt the same. But he also liked Elise, and he couldn't just dump her like last weeks trash, especially not now that he'd introduced her to the Underland. 

Luxa, however, hadn't picked up on the fact that Gregor had wanted to kiss her, and was now waging an internal battle against her feelings. The ride back to the castle was a tense one, filled with Elise's exclamations about the Underland, the gentle answers to questions Gregor gave her, and the harsh few lines Luxa could force out through her inner turmoil. She was easily falling into the spoiled brat of a princess front she's almost scared Gregor off with in the first place. This visit was not going to be a fun one.  
...

By the next day, nothing had happened to decrease the tense atmosphere. Luxa was in one of the rooms in the royal wing, fidgeting with one of the jewels she was being forced to wear. The council had decided a few weeks previously that she had spent enough time as the sole reigning monarch and that Nerissa was clearly never going to produce heirs to the throne, and therefore it was time she thought about a family. 

Luxa had thought that Gregor's visit could be used to cancel the date with the council's suitor if he had shown interest in her. Though he was not Underland born, the council could not argue against the worth of the Warrior. Of course, he'd brought a girlfriend along, and now her plans were ruined.

She finally forced herself to rise from the chair she was sitting in and head toward the preplanned meeting place. The thought of some of the preplanned suitors on the list made her skin crawl, but at least today's was expected to be live able. 

Just outside the room her 'date' was supposed to take place in, Luxa ran into Gregor. He stopped in his tracks when he saw her, dressed up and looking like a real Queen for once. 

"Luxa. You look beautiful." Gregor was telling the truth, she did look beautiful, but something about her outfit also looked forced, not at all like the warrior princess he'd met when he was eleven. 

"Thank you Gregor. Now I must go. I should not be late." Just as Luxa was about to push through the curtain and deal with the council's new way to torture her, Gregor caught her arm and pulled her back.

"Late for what?" He asked, smiling at her, hoping maybe she'd loosen up around him. 

Luxa debated her answers for a second, and decided on the truth. 

"The council has decided I'm am old enough to be married, but as I have shown no interest in anyone, they thought it would be a good idea to give me a list of suitors to run through and see who I liked most." She put on a brave smile that Gregor could see right through and added "I was interested in someone at one point, but that was a long time ago." She wondered if he understood what she meant by the sentence, and how he left about it. 

"Oh," he said, and felt the same pull towards her he'd felt the day before, when they would have kissed if Elise hadn't thrown herself into the air. 

Gregor was just starting to lean towards her again when the curtain was pulled back harshly by the man Luxa was supposed to be meeting. 

"Queen Luxa! There you are. You were almost late. Come, join me for lunch."

And so something pulled them apart a second time.  
...

Later that very night, nightmares roused Gregor from a not so peaceful slumber. Although he had long since rid his waking thoughts of the horrible days he spent batting alongside his long dead bond, the memories were still contenders in his dreams when he had been reminded of the horrors during the day. The past few nights in the Underland had been hard ones, but this was by far the worst. He had been plagued by his almost death all night, and only now had he broken free of the memory. 

He sat up slowly, one hand running through his already utterly a mess hair. His room was dark, the sole torch far down the hallway doing little to light his room through the thick curtain. His hand landed clumsily on the box of matches on the stone bedside table, and he struck one quickly to bring some light to the room. He then introduced the tiny flame to the wick of the oil lamp nearby and lighted the heavy metal lamp to carry it with him. He planned on seeking out a quiet corner of the castle far from the sleeping chambers of others and allowing the repressed memories to come flooding back. 

His wandering steps lead him towards rather familiar rooms, the storage closets that had once been nurseries in the days of Bartholomew of Sandwich. A light flickered slowly in the one housing the Prophecy of the Nibblers, the one misinterpreted as a child's rhyme for so many years. 

Gregor pulled back the curtain gently, and his eyes fell on Luxa, curled up by the nursery rhyme, one hand gently caressing one of the father, mother, sister, brother lines, the pain of losing so many people in her short life clear on her face. 

Gregor stepped into the room and set the metal gas lamp on the ground. The click of metal meeting stone caused Luxa to look up in slight alarm. 

"Gregor..." she sighed, some of the pain melting away from her face as she looked at him.

Gregor lightly stepped the rest of the way to her and settled down beside her, leaning against the wall and looking at her softly. 

"I'm sorry." He said, reaching out and taking her hand in his. "I'm sorry your parents died, I'm sorry my father fell, I'm sorry I didn't go to camp that day, I'm sorry Henry wasn't what you thought he was, I'm sorry those prophecies had to screw your life up so horribly. I'm sorry we're both so broken because we fought and killed and watched people die when we were eleven. I'm sorry for it all, even if that doesn't change any of it. I'm sorry for it all, even if I didn't cause any of it." Gregor squeezed her hand softly, eyes downcast away from her.

"And I am sorry my world stole away your life, and that it almost stole away your light."

Luxa leaned into him heavily, her head resting on his shoulder. They stayed like that for many minutes, resting on each other in a position all too similar to the one they had been in the day Gregor was supposed to die. 

Slowly, as if reliving the moment many years ago, they turned to face each other, and and seemed to gravitate towards each other. 

Then something flared to life in Luxa's eyes. She pushed Gregor away from herself quickly and sprang to her feet. Her eyes looked broken, clearly halfway between the moment when she was eleven and the moment that had just ended. 

"Gregor. You have a girlfriend. I have a kingdom to run. We can't keep almost going back to when we were eleven. We either go there or we don't. You have to decide where we're going so I can move on and work with the council or give us another try." Luxa turned away from him and fled the room, not even giving him the chance to say anything. There was nothing he could have said anyway.  
...

The next morning found Gregor and Elise sitting together in her room. She had called him in from the hallway with remorse clear in her voice. 

Just a Gregor was settling onto the bed beside her, Elise spoke. "I saw it. Both times that you and Luxa almost kissed. And I should have expected it, because the look on your face every time you told me about her made it so obvious you still liked her. But I thought that she wouldn't still like you and we could still work through it. Clearly, however, we can't." She turned to look at him with a sad smile. "So I'm going back home, and you are going to make things right." She stood up, left a soft kiss on his forehead, and left him there. 

Of course, Gregor sprang up and raced after her, catching her upper arm easily. "Are you sure? We could go back up together and figure this out." Gregor offered because he knew he could go either way, and it depended on what she wanted. 

"I'm sure." She said, the slipped out of his grip before he could question her again.  
...

The first thing Gregor did after she was gone was go looking for Luxa. He found her easily enough, participating in one of the harder bat gymnastic practices in the arena. Aurora saw his signal and lowered her rider to the ground. Luxa whispered something that sent her flying off again. 

"Elise left. We weren't working." Gregor said, then added, "And I'd like to try things again with you. But-"

Gregor was cut short by Luxa rushing forwards to hug him. She was just about to kiss him we he finished his sentence. "But I want to wait, and I want to take things slower. You were right yesterday. You do have a kingdom to run, and I don't want us to mess up how good you are at ruling."  
...  
Gregor spent several more weeks in the Underland than he'd meant to. At first, he'd meant to show Elise the world that was so important to him for a few days, but it had turned into him staying to work on a relationship with Luxa. Of course, his Overland life wasn't completely wrapped up, and there was a time when his summer vacation was nearing its end and he had to go back above. Luxa went with him to see him off.

The two of them stood under the rock in Central Park, a torch in Luxa's hand. 

"Goodbye." She said, smiling up at him, only her eyes betraying that she was sad to see him go. 

"See you soon." Gregor replied, and then felt compelled to lean down towards her. 

Their lips were inches away from each other when Luxa closed the gap, using her free hand to pull his head closer to hers. There was a moment where Gregor was surprised that they'd finally kissed again, after nine years, but that quickly melted away as he kissed her back. The moment was sweet and perfect, but short, like all moments are, and then Gregor was pulling away and lifting the stone above their heads out of the way. 

"I'm going to miss you, but I'll come back as soon as possible." He promised, leaving her with a smile and only memories. That would be one of the first promises he kept to her, but many more were to come.


End file.
